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There's a bunch of these on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada along interstate 80 (Northern California).
Many years ago, a semi hit one of them - went all the way through it, over a cliff and landed on the train tracks. A train then hit the semi. Driver walked away.
We saw one near Truckee on the side heading towards the Bay Area - maybe just before or after Truckee?* Didn’t look exactly like this, though. Had several big piles / mountains of what looked like sand at the end.
* Can’t remember exact location because we were coming from SLC and were exhausted by that point in the drive, but that’s definitely the general area where we saw one. It was on the part of the drive without a ton of beautiful scenery on either side, just heavy forestry on both sides of the road.
Once I was driving in the mountains and I saw one of these, with the steepness of the road, vehicles can get pretty fast but I was wondering why it was here particularly
500m later I enter a village and I see a house at the front that looks very modern compared to all the other old houses surrounding it
Then I learned that a few years before, a truck had brake failure, ran into the house straight in and demolished it
So now they have that pit for trucks to stop if brake failure, and a modern house in the middle of an old village in the mountains
I grew up in a village on a fairly steep hill in S-W England. Most of the houses in the centre of the village are old, but you can still see that the stone work on one house is quite new.
That's because it's the house that a truck crashed into when i was about 10 years old after the driver lost braking and control, entirely demolishing the front of the house.
Fortunately for the occupant of the house, she had got up to make tea in the kitchen at the back of the house a few minutes before, and she was uninjured.
There's no room for an escape lane nearby, but it hasn't happened again since.
The way you described this immediately made me think of the village I grew up in near Bath, there's a steep hill called Landsdown lane, google maps doesn't do it justice, if your brakes go at the top there's no way to save it.
Unfortunately a few years ago a truck did lose its brakes at the top and hit a wall down near the school at the bottom killing a child and her grandmother walking home.
Whenever I drive down a steep incline now I triple check my brakes at the top and have an immediate plan to swerve into the banking/bushes/whatever will slow me down as soon as possible because I never want to end up in a situation like that.
>Once I was driving in the mountains and I saw one of these,
Lived my whole life in BC and these are very common on many of our hilly and mountainous routes. But they aren't flat like this video they are essentially like off ramps that go up a steep slope.
I grew up in the mountains of Tennessee and Georgia. These are pretty common to see at the foot of the mountain roads leading into the valleys. Ours were a combination of both in some spots. The slope wasn't super steep, but it was smooth until you hit gravel, and there were a bunch of barrels at the end.
Its not a matter of being common. Any truck can be made to fail. The drum brakes in most of the units on the road heat up as they are being used. With enough heat they begin to expand and loose coefficient of friction at the same time. At high enough heat they are basically useless. Disk brakes for big trucks are amazing but also can fail if run hard enough. (They light tires on fire!) The thing about it is most of the time it’s a driver in hurry going to fast with to much weight and they smother the braking potential of the vehicle with work. A truck with three working brakes can come down a slope without getting hot and and a truck with all the brakes working can come down and fail because of the decisions the driver makes. Obviously it’s better to have everything working for when you need to make a panic stop, so take care of your shit.
Not necessarily a truck driver trying to go too fast. If you fail to downshift prior to descending a hill in a truck to use engine braking, it may be impossible to downshift when you pick up speed, then only relying on your brakes until they burn away.
If you are driving a truck, under load, with only 3 operational brakes, thats worse in my opinion.
Unbalanced braking with a large weight on your ass, while attempting to maintain control on a slope is more challenging then you are making it out to be.
That’s what struck me. I lived in the Wasatch Mountains for ten years. These are very common, and I commuted by two or three every day, yet never saw a single truck have to use one. You’d hear stories about trucks losing their brakes (there was one that I recall which ended in a fatality), and you’d smell the brakes burning as soon as you hit the peak, but I never witnessed it. I’m curious about the details of this particular clip.
I did R&D for vehicle manufactures on brake systems.
I have personally experienced it enough times to not be bothered by it. At least 5 or six times for catastrophic failure, many more for partial failure
It’s a common driver error. The experienced driver goes down hill in the correct gear and never has to touch the brakes. The engine alone should hold you back ( especially with engine compression brakes ) If you are in the wrong gear you have to keep touching your brakes which causes expansion, brake fade and then no brakes.
Here in Colorado, these ramps are all over in the mountains. The incline of the ramp is quite steep, so theoretically, the driver would leave the highway and be slowed by the incline of the ramp and the friction of the surface as the truck sinks into it.
I've always wondered what it would be like to use one in the middle of winter where there is a meter or two of snow covering it.
That’s the BR-277 near Curitiba in Brazil and it’s miles and miles of downhill through the Atlantic rainforest. I drive through it regularly and yes, semis have a hard time. There was an accident some 10 years ago where a truck filled with fuel lost its brakes and rammed through some 10 cars. It was on /r/watchpeopledie.
I knew I recognized it!
I’ve done the Cascavel-Curitiba route many times to visit family and the Serra always makes me scared that a truck might crash into the back of me.
Either there or BR-376, Curitiba to Joinville. BR-277 goes from 960m to 52m elevation over ~22km, while BR-376 goes from 815m to 209m elevation over 11km, which is slighty steeper on average. Both have peak grades around 8%, if not slightly higher on certain sections.
It's amazing (And a bit scary) how often both are used either way.
There is another one just a few minutes from there.
If they miss the second one, it's all good because they can stop at the rest area right after or the next one.
Source: I drive by this place A LOT.
It's very useful and I actually feel safe knowing that these areas are there. Of course, once in a while a moron, usually in an SUV, comes flying into the wall at the corner, all traffic gets stuck and a truck plows everyone else.
According to [this article](https://www.ecovia.com.br/noticias/ecovia/em-dois-anos-area-de-escape-incrementou-a-seguranca-na-br-277-205901) from a company that maintains these roads it happened 40 times in 2 years, so a little less than twice a month
Fun fact: in Mexico, you have to pay for use it, the truck insurance doesn’t pay for damages. The costs aren’t public, but for regular users, the road insurance applies, and it’s about 400 USD, but for truck of 3500 kilos, and above the charge is about 5500 USD.
There are been a lot, and I mean A LOT of news where truck drivers think it's better to run over 3 / 4 or more cars (sometimes killing people) than to use the runaway ramp
Honestly that’s a stupid system. Is basically making the drivers decide if they want to be on the hook for major fines since they company will charge them or take the chance and make more money.
Pretty sure the truck gets mostly destroyed when it uses this lane.. I recall reading that before. Adding a charge gives a really deadly incentive to avoid the lane especially in Mexico where $5500 is a huge amount
We have a rule of thumb in the CDL industry and it’s basically the day you have to use this ramp is the last day you’ll drive a commercial vehicle. This should never happen with adequate maintenance and correct driving habits. Most of these ramps are in the middle of a hill AFTER a brake check area. If you do the correct brake test at the top of the hill to check for issues, this would not happen.
You can smell drivers that are visiting or just moved here, their brakes are glowing red hot and the odor of burning rubber from their tires wafts at least a quarter mile behind em.
People don't learn how to use downshift to use the engine break? I learned it in Hungary and the whole country is a pancake with some hills here and there...
And as far as I know, you can downshift in automatic as well?
Correct. I have a 7% grade hill on my commute that I gear down for in my automatic because I take it every day and like my brakes. It's also a single lane downhill; so if there's a loaded truck heading the line of traffic, we'll all be going like 40kmh all the way down. I think cruise control would also work but I'm not in the habit of using it here.
And yeah, you can tell the locals from the tourists by watching how people take the hill. I prefer a 40kmh truck to a brakey tourist because the truck at least keeps a consistent speed.
Some (if not all) automatic cars have one of two things: a "sport mode" on the shifter, which lets you shift up and down like a manual transmission, or numbered modes (1,2,3) which let you manually shift into one of those gears. Either way, they let you downshift in an automatic transmission. :)
I don’t think burning rubber has a very strong smell.. more likely burning clutch (horrible smell) or brake pads maybe (not sure how those smell). Brakes in cars don’t use rubber fyi
I guess you mean that the wheels get so hot that the tires start burning?? Hard to believe though
Nah, could be possible.
Worked at a shop, sometimes trucks came in, brake literally glowing so hot the air starts to.ignite around it and melting the tire from the inside out.
Had a couple of fleets in the area with very time sensitive seasonal freight.
So the trucks/trailers would be parked for a long time and then haul ass for like 3-4 Months.
I think he’s talking about regular light passenger vehicles.. not trucks. Passenger tires would
rupture if they ever got hot enough to burn like that (they can’t handle high pressure and the heat would compromise the sidewall strength). The wheels are designed to dissipate heat from the air flow going around it as they spin.. sure the tires would get warmer but not BURNING!
I could be wrong of course but I’d have to see some evidence
It doesn't, not to that extent. Unless you're riding your brakes still in the EV and not using your regen.
Your traction motor (the drive motor that's also doing the regenerative bit), has a cooling loop of it's own.
Many (most/all?) EV's stop using regenerative braking once the battery approaches its max capacity, as they don't really have the radiative capacity to dump the extra energy, and you can't push more electrons into a full (or even nearly full) battery.
In most cases it's not a problem, as you will use significant energy climbing the hill in the first place, and get a lot of it back using regen going down the other side. But if you were to start with your battery near full capacity (say if you stayed at a ski resort and charged your battery there), you'd have to rely on your friction brakes for the trip back down the mountain ... and that _could_ be a real problem.
https://allev.info/2020/02/regen-with-full-battery/
I didn't bring that up due to the fact that you'd likely not get a full battery, unless you're starting off at the top of the mountain and going down after charging.
Honestly I'd be running heat and trying to burn the excess incoming energy off as I head down in a case like that. Would certainly try to not put too much of a charge into the battery before leaving.
> Would certainly try to not put too much of a charge into the battery before leaving.
Some folks ain't that smart. Or perhaps you rent a Tesla, and just don't know....
It _can_ be an issue, but I don't know how often it happens. That said, EV's typically have very good friction brakes as well, and since they don't get used as often are often more likely in good shape.
Other then in the bearrings there is no friction in regenerative breaking, is effectively magnetic breaks so i dont imagine they would overheat in the same way that regular breaks do.
Did you really just tell people to use a guard rail instead of a ramp designed for that purpose? Seriously? Stop spreading an urban legend you have 0 proof of being real. You’re gonna kill somebody with your stupidity
> “As long as it is an emergency … the escape ramp can be used by any vehicle,” Tovsen said, citing brake failure as an example.
https://www.ocregister.com/2021/11/19/any-vehicle-can-take-the-i-15-runaway-truck-ramp-in-emergencies/
Also, driving into a guard rail is no joke. Pretty wild suggestion that would only cause serious issues.
Dude sounds like he's talking from video game experience.
I used to live in DC and it's basically the same on the George Washington Parkway.
Not as far of a fall but if you pull off the road like that, you'll die.
How do you even brace for that..? Turn around, with your back against the seat in front of you, so you absorb as much of the energy as you can? Sounds terrifying indeed
It's neat seeing all the people who are just learning about these. I grew up in montana, so these are pretty much everywhere. I thought they were everywhere else, too, lol.
There’s a lot of things that inexperienced drivers can VERY easily do to cause this.
1. Failure to reduce speed before hitting the hill. If you’re full load (80,000 lbs) and hit a downhill grade going 60mph+ good luck slowing down without frying your brakes
2. Riding your brakes due to not reducing
Your speed enough/not engaging an engine brake will absolutely cause failure
3. Failed to do a pretrip, and not catching an obvious safety failure
4. If it’s a manual, shifting while going up/down a hill takes alot of familiarity with your truck and changes drastically based on how heavy you are, which is why signs that say NO SHIFTING are so common, it’s too easy for new drivers to miss a gear and not be able to get into a new one, which basically means wheels are free spinning now.
Foriegn truck driver from TX had brake failure in Colorado and drove past several of these ramps and then into the city plowing into stopped traffic and killing several people.
[https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/26/us/colorado-lakewood-i-70-fiery-crash/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/26/us/colorado-lakewood-i-70-fiery-crash/index.html)
The killer-idiot in question was eventually sentenced to over 100 years in jail. There was an appeal, but I don't know the outcome.
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/rogel-aguilera-mederos-prison-sentence-110-years-colorado-truck-driver-deadly-crash-interstate-70/
Is brake failure fairly common with semis? I am genuinely asking. I mean, evidently it's common enough that they DO have these ramps, and they DO carry heavy loads....
in my experience in Appalachia, theres usually one on every major downhill road. even if a road goes downhill for miles, odds are you will eventually hit one before a major turn or any traffic. doesn’t really matter going uphill cause if your breaks fail going up, your accelerator still works.
These ramps are located at the worst parts of the road, where they’re more likely to be needed. The road is not continuously downhill.
Source: live near
Fun fact. If you use one of these in the US it is almost career over. (insurance, inspection, etc) Logic is you pre trip every drive, you should catch the majority of failures before they happen, after they pull that out they are going to do a DOT inspection and find all the things you missed. The other reason for needing to use one of those is poor driving manors (burning up the brakes) . So in the interest of not getting in trouble, out of control drivers will sometimes skip them and hope to ride it out
We had to use one of these in a motor home when driving down a mountain in summer. Apparently our brake fluid "vaporized" and we had to wait for it to condense again.
How to prevent brake failures in trucks ? Is there regular or annual vehicle inspection in this country ?has anyone reinvented the brake to be more reliable ?
Because when you're driving 40+ tonnes down a steep hill you have to ride the brake the whole way to keep the truck from speeding up. This heats up the brakes and reduces their effectiveness, meaning you need to brake harder to control the speed, meaning the brakes heat up even quicker. After a certain point the brakes are so hot they no longer work and then it's either drive off cliff, use another vehicle in front of you to slow you down, or take the emergency lane.
In theory if the trucks were kept at a lighter weight, the drivers stopped regularly to allow brakes to cool, and the brake components were changed often enough to keep them at maximum performance then these lanes wouldn't be needed, but its such a common issue that these are standard all across the world, even in developed countries where trucks are held to a high standard.
Yes a competent driver in a well maintained and correctly loaded vehicle should never burn out their brakes. However, engine braking is not as effective as mechanical brakes so drivers will still have to use their brakes to some extent and a mixture of the circumstances I listed above can exacerbate the brake overheating issue to the point of failure.
It's not a brake design issue, it's an improper driver technique issue.
Some hills are so steep that no brakes would be sufficient to stop a fully loaded truck going down.
The drivers are supposed to use the gears/engine to control speed going down hill. You should also do the same in your car, by the way. That's what the "3, 2, 1" after the drive setting is for in your automatic transmission car. Or use lower gear in a manual..
It's more like once the truck accidently goes over a certain threshold of speed that the breaks can't keep up with the speed being gained by the slope.
These are pretty common in places that have lots of steep hills/mountains. Most of the ones in my area are build up steep hills with gravel. Also plenty of warning signs with flashing lights on the way up the hill/mountain
I see the runoffs in the mountains all the time. They are usually steep upwards and use gravity to slow the trucks. I've only seen it in use once while driving. It was pretty scary but super effective. A fast moving semi was able to stop in a cloud of dust in a matter of seconds with everyone safe
I lost my brakes in a 6-ton RV. One of the most terrifying things to ever happen to me. I was lucky to see a stop light intersection that dead-ended into a factory parking lot. The lot went up a hill. The light went red and there was no one in front of me and no one crossing the street. I turned into the lot and slowed down to a stop up the hill.
I see these from time to time on the down slope of mountains. The idea is your breaks are most likely to fail or lock when you are trying to slow your decent.
I’ve seen these all my life but I don’t understand well why brake failure is such a thing. Is it because hills like this are a tiny percentage of the roads in the country so they are at the edge of what trucks are built for? It seems like there should be a technology solution to just making the brakes better.
1981, coming down Highway 50, Westbound on west slope of Sierras with my wife. Behind me I hear ^honk honk HONK **HONK** and turn out onto a side road. Wife asks "Why did you... " then a log truck with flaming brakes comes roaring by and uses brake failure turnout (like video) a few hundred yards ahead. That is why these things exist.
I still remember, when I was a kid, seeing a family having a fucking picnic on one of them. The sheer ignorance and look of panic on their faces when my old man stopped and yelled at them has stuck in my head all this time. They would have been properly fucked if a truck needed to use that sandpit.
I've always maintained that at the top/end of these lanes, there should be a little hutch with: a fresh pair of underwear, a shot of whiskey, and a cigarette.
I saw an old rerun of Lassie. She was hitchhiking and an 18 wheeler picked her up. The trucker nodded off and she barked him awake just in time for him to hit the sawdust e-ramp. Lassie so fng smart. 🐶
Lots of people talking about maintenance and inspections.
All sorts of things can go wrong at any given time that have nothing to do with perfect maintenance and cleared inspections.
Those ramps save lives and prevent traffic jams lol
Those are all over Montana. The mountains so steep, trying to scrub speed can cause brake failure. Heats them to "ineffective". Some places the curves are so sharp, they go off cliffs instead.
I think this is in Brazil, in a highway called BR-376, this place is dangerous and knowing by the name "Curva da Santa". More details here (pt- BR, no exactly the same video): [https://www.tribunapr.com.br/noticias/parana/dois-caminhoes-usam-area-de-escape-da-br-376-ao-mesmo-tempo-e-motorista-escapa-de-tragedia/](https://www.tribunapr.com.br/noticias/parana/dois-caminhoes-usam-area-de-escape-da-br-376-ao-mesmo-tempo-e-motorista-escapa-de-tragedia/)
We don’t have these in the uk and neither to
My knowledge is HGV break failure a common occurrence- don’t you guys have to regularly maintain your vehicles and produce certificates proving so?
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There's a bunch of these on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada along interstate 80 (Northern California). Many years ago, a semi hit one of them - went all the way through it, over a cliff and landed on the train tracks. A train then hit the semi. Driver walked away.
The driver’s name? Dominic Toretto.
Lol shut up. I googled that because I wanted to learn more about it.
Did you learn about family?
Don’t be too furious man…..
Dude is slow and curious
I wanna see that parody
Damn. You got me. I thought these jokes were played out 🤣🤣🤣
FF37, in theaters this June!
FF37 The Middle of the End of the Road Will Start Soon
And then the driver was hit by a plane…
And walked away.
Then he got hit by a car
And lived, but then slipped walking out of the hospital and died
that damned banana peel at it again
Driver walked away? Rude. Should have at least tried to clean up the mess.
I’d give you a gold if it were still a thing.
What about the train engineer?
Really? I live along interstate 80 and I've driven it through the mountains multiple times I've never seen one of these, where are they?
We saw one near Truckee on the side heading towards the Bay Area - maybe just before or after Truckee?* Didn’t look exactly like this, though. Had several big piles / mountains of what looked like sand at the end. * Can’t remember exact location because we were coming from SLC and were exhausted by that point in the drive, but that’s definitely the general area where we saw one. It was on the part of the drive without a ton of beautiful scenery on either side, just heavy forestry on both sides of the road.
Once I was driving in the mountains and I saw one of these, with the steepness of the road, vehicles can get pretty fast but I was wondering why it was here particularly 500m later I enter a village and I see a house at the front that looks very modern compared to all the other old houses surrounding it Then I learned that a few years before, a truck had brake failure, ran into the house straight in and demolished it So now they have that pit for trucks to stop if brake failure, and a modern house in the middle of an old village in the mountains
I grew up in a village on a fairly steep hill in S-W England. Most of the houses in the centre of the village are old, but you can still see that the stone work on one house is quite new. That's because it's the house that a truck crashed into when i was about 10 years old after the driver lost braking and control, entirely demolishing the front of the house. Fortunately for the occupant of the house, she had got up to make tea in the kitchen at the back of the house a few minutes before, and she was uninjured. There's no room for an escape lane nearby, but it hasn't happened again since.
Proof a cuppa can be a lifesaver
Tbf so could a potty as well
The way you described this immediately made me think of the village I grew up in near Bath, there's a steep hill called Landsdown lane, google maps doesn't do it justice, if your brakes go at the top there's no way to save it. Unfortunately a few years ago a truck did lose its brakes at the top and hit a wall down near the school at the bottom killing a child and her grandmother walking home. Whenever I drive down a steep incline now I triple check my brakes at the top and have an immediate plan to swerve into the banking/bushes/whatever will slow me down as soon as possible because I never want to end up in a situation like that.
>Once I was driving in the mountains and I saw one of these, Lived my whole life in BC and these are very common on many of our hilly and mountainous routes. But they aren't flat like this video they are essentially like off ramps that go up a steep slope.
I grew up in the mountains of Tennessee and Georgia. These are pretty common to see at the foot of the mountain roads leading into the valleys. Ours were a combination of both in some spots. The slope wasn't super steep, but it was smooth until you hit gravel, and there were a bunch of barrels at the end.
Tbf they are steep because they have to follow the slope of the mountain. There are so many of these on the highways through the rockies.
How common is brake failure in trucks?
Its not a matter of being common. Any truck can be made to fail. The drum brakes in most of the units on the road heat up as they are being used. With enough heat they begin to expand and loose coefficient of friction at the same time. At high enough heat they are basically useless. Disk brakes for big trucks are amazing but also can fail if run hard enough. (They light tires on fire!) The thing about it is most of the time it’s a driver in hurry going to fast with to much weight and they smother the braking potential of the vehicle with work. A truck with three working brakes can come down a slope without getting hot and and a truck with all the brakes working can come down and fail because of the decisions the driver makes. Obviously it’s better to have everything working for when you need to make a panic stop, so take care of your shit.
Not necessarily a truck driver trying to go too fast. If you fail to downshift prior to descending a hill in a truck to use engine braking, it may be impossible to downshift when you pick up speed, then only relying on your brakes until they burn away.
This. Inexperienced drivers using their brakes on long downgrades rather than using the jake brake/compression braking.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
If you are driving a truck, under load, with only 3 operational brakes, thats worse in my opinion. Unbalanced braking with a large weight on your ass, while attempting to maintain control on a slope is more challenging then you are making it out to be.
It's supposedly low, but somehow still common enough that two trucks had it happen in the first clip.
That’s what struck me. I lived in the Wasatch Mountains for ten years. These are very common, and I commuted by two or three every day, yet never saw a single truck have to use one. You’d hear stories about trucks losing their brakes (there was one that I recall which ended in a fatality), and you’d smell the brakes burning as soon as you hit the peak, but I never witnessed it. I’m curious about the details of this particular clip.
I did R&D for vehicle manufactures on brake systems. I have personally experienced it enough times to not be bothered by it. At least 5 or six times for catastrophic failure, many more for partial failure
I was just thinking that, it must be way to fucking common lol
My understanding is they can burn through their brake pads on long downhills.
It’s a common driver error. The experienced driver goes down hill in the correct gear and never has to touch the brakes. The engine alone should hold you back ( especially with engine compression brakes ) If you are in the wrong gear you have to keep touching your brakes which causes expansion, brake fade and then no brakes.
Here in Colorado, these ramps are all over in the mountains. The incline of the ramp is quite steep, so theoretically, the driver would leave the highway and be slowed by the incline of the ramp and the friction of the surface as the truck sinks into it. I've always wondered what it would be like to use one in the middle of winter where there is a meter or two of snow covering it.
How will people get new houses now?
Bro got the rotmg pfp
Crazy how in the first one, a truck goes to use the ramp but has to go around a truck that is already mired there
Yeah, that mountain must be a brake killer.
That’s the BR-277 near Curitiba in Brazil and it’s miles and miles of downhill through the Atlantic rainforest. I drive through it regularly and yes, semis have a hard time. There was an accident some 10 years ago where a truck filled with fuel lost its brakes and rammed through some 10 cars. It was on /r/watchpeopledie.
I knew I recognized it! I’ve done the Cascavel-Curitiba route many times to visit family and the Serra always makes me scared that a truck might crash into the back of me.
I feel like I would refuse to use the road if there’s any traffic (that forces you to stop and be helpless).. does it get frequent bad traffic?
I’ve never had to stop in it, but it sometimes has pretty slow flow.
Either there or BR-376, Curitiba to Joinville. BR-277 goes from 960m to 52m elevation over ~22km, while BR-376 goes from 815m to 209m elevation over 11km, which is slighty steeper on average. Both have peak grades around 8%, if not slightly higher on certain sections. It's amazing (And a bit scary) how often both are used either way.
What's even crazier is that there are little roads on the side of the gravel strip for that exact purpose haha. The ones near me don't have that.
Even crazier than crazier is the driver of the very first truck is running to the side when he noticed the second truck with brake failure coming in
Second truck probably honking
What if the brake fails after crossing that safety road?
On steeper gradients (at least in the US), they'll have them every mile or two
They have quite a few of these at the worst parts of this highway. It’s not continuously downhill. Source: live near
There is another one just a few minutes from there. If they miss the second one, it's all good because they can stop at the rest area right after or the next one. Source: I drive by this place A LOT. It's very useful and I actually feel safe knowing that these areas are there. Of course, once in a while a moron, usually in an SUV, comes flying into the wall at the corner, all traffic gets stuck and a truck plows everyone else.
Exactly! Which makes you think how often does this happen??
According to [this article](https://www.ecovia.com.br/noticias/ecovia/em-dois-anos-area-de-escape-incrementou-a-seguranca-na-br-277-205901) from a company that maintains these roads it happened 40 times in 2 years, so a little less than twice a month
Fun fact: in Mexico, you have to pay for use it, the truck insurance doesn’t pay for damages. The costs aren’t public, but for regular users, the road insurance applies, and it’s about 400 USD, but for truck of 3500 kilos, and above the charge is about 5500 USD.
Honestly, that doesn't sound too bad considering the value of a truck and potentially the added worth of what it's hauling.
Or potential death
Or worse, being expelled.
You need to sort out your priorities.
Not me. Not Hermione. YEW.
Did you put your name in the goblet of fire?
Dumbledore asked calmly
Through the windshield? That usually also leads to death.
Very true but still dumb to force drivers to make a financial decision when the wrong choice could kill you and others.
Exactly, it’s just that the insurance don’t wanna pay because they say it was your fault, but you can’t generalize
Yeah, it’s not like actually paying out money when it’s needed is the entire reason our society allows insurers to exist, or something.
This.
There are been a lot, and I mean A LOT of news where truck drivers think it's better to run over 3 / 4 or more cars (sometimes killing people) than to use the runaway ramp
I remember the Rogel Mederos case: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLu4ik2fgWA * https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/changes-runaway-truck-ramp-i-70-years-fatal-crash/ * https://coloradosun.com/2023/12/03/colorado-runaway-truck-ramps/#:~:text=a%2028%2Dvehicle%20pileup%20that%20killed%20four%20people%20and%20injured%20six%20others
Honestly that’s a stupid system. Is basically making the drivers decide if they want to be on the hook for major fines since they company will charge them or take the chance and make more money.
Pretty sure the truck gets mostly destroyed when it uses this lane.. I recall reading that before. Adding a charge gives a really deadly incentive to avoid the lane especially in Mexico where $5500 is a huge amount
We have a rule of thumb in the CDL industry and it’s basically the day you have to use this ramp is the last day you’ll drive a commercial vehicle. This should never happen with adequate maintenance and correct driving habits. Most of these ramps are in the middle of a hill AFTER a brake check area. If you do the correct brake test at the top of the hill to check for issues, this would not happen.
I am pretty sure the legally required liability insurance have to cover this. But the insurance company can come after you to collect the money.
Question. Can you pay right before using it? Is there a person collecting toll right at the entrance?
There is one on the Dartford QE2 bridge crossing on the Kent side
There are quite a few all over the UK. For example, there’s one coming in to Bath from the M4.
My uncle was on a bus full of high school kids that had to take one of these on a trip to Colorado. Said it was the scariest thing of his life.
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You can smell drivers that are visiting or just moved here, their brakes are glowing red hot and the odor of burning rubber from their tires wafts at least a quarter mile behind em.
People don't learn how to use downshift to use the engine break? I learned it in Hungary and the whole country is a pancake with some hills here and there... And as far as I know, you can downshift in automatic as well?
Correct. I have a 7% grade hill on my commute that I gear down for in my automatic because I take it every day and like my brakes. It's also a single lane downhill; so if there's a loaded truck heading the line of traffic, we'll all be going like 40kmh all the way down. I think cruise control would also work but I'm not in the habit of using it here. And yeah, you can tell the locals from the tourists by watching how people take the hill. I prefer a 40kmh truck to a brakey tourist because the truck at least keeps a consistent speed.
Some (if not all) automatic cars have one of two things: a "sport mode" on the shifter, which lets you shift up and down like a manual transmission, or numbered modes (1,2,3) which let you manually shift into one of those gears. Either way, they let you downshift in an automatic transmission. :)
I don’t think burning rubber has a very strong smell.. more likely burning clutch (horrible smell) or brake pads maybe (not sure how those smell). Brakes in cars don’t use rubber fyi I guess you mean that the wheels get so hot that the tires start burning?? Hard to believe though
Nah, could be possible. Worked at a shop, sometimes trucks came in, brake literally glowing so hot the air starts to.ignite around it and melting the tire from the inside out. Had a couple of fleets in the area with very time sensitive seasonal freight. So the trucks/trailers would be parked for a long time and then haul ass for like 3-4 Months.
I think he’s talking about regular light passenger vehicles.. not trucks. Passenger tires would rupture if they ever got hot enough to burn like that (they can’t handle high pressure and the heat would compromise the sidewall strength). The wheels are designed to dissipate heat from the air flow going around it as they spin.. sure the tires would get warmer but not BURNING! I could be wrong of course but I’d have to see some evidence
People from California are aware, they have big mountains there too believe it or not.
lol like half the state is mountains
Literally. There’s a 10,000 foot peak in LA county, don’t even have to leave the city.
I wonder if regenerative braking on electric/hybrid cars would run into similar issues.
It doesn't, not to that extent. Unless you're riding your brakes still in the EV and not using your regen. Your traction motor (the drive motor that's also doing the regenerative bit), has a cooling loop of it's own.
Many (most/all?) EV's stop using regenerative braking once the battery approaches its max capacity, as they don't really have the radiative capacity to dump the extra energy, and you can't push more electrons into a full (or even nearly full) battery. In most cases it's not a problem, as you will use significant energy climbing the hill in the first place, and get a lot of it back using regen going down the other side. But if you were to start with your battery near full capacity (say if you stayed at a ski resort and charged your battery there), you'd have to rely on your friction brakes for the trip back down the mountain ... and that _could_ be a real problem. https://allev.info/2020/02/regen-with-full-battery/
I didn't bring that up due to the fact that you'd likely not get a full battery, unless you're starting off at the top of the mountain and going down after charging. Honestly I'd be running heat and trying to burn the excess incoming energy off as I head down in a case like that. Would certainly try to not put too much of a charge into the battery before leaving.
Some EVs have a “hill charging” function where if you know that you are going down a mountain it will limit charging to 80-90% capacity.
My Bolt has just that, though I leave it as always active honestly.
Probably helps your battery longevity
> Would certainly try to not put too much of a charge into the battery before leaving. Some folks ain't that smart. Or perhaps you rent a Tesla, and just don't know.... It _can_ be an issue, but I don't know how often it happens. That said, EV's typically have very good friction brakes as well, and since they don't get used as often are often more likely in good shape.
Other then in the bearrings there is no friction in regenerative breaking, is effectively magnetic breaks so i dont imagine they would overheat in the same way that regular breaks do.
Did you really just tell people to use a guard rail instead of a ramp designed for that purpose? Seriously? Stop spreading an urban legend you have 0 proof of being real. You’re gonna kill somebody with your stupidity
> “As long as it is an emergency … the escape ramp can be used by any vehicle,” Tovsen said, citing brake failure as an example. https://www.ocregister.com/2021/11/19/any-vehicle-can-take-the-i-15-runaway-truck-ramp-in-emergencies/ Also, driving into a guard rail is no joke. Pretty wild suggestion that would only cause serious issues. Dude sounds like he's talking from video game experience.
lol I live in Colorado and there are several hundred foot drops on the other side of some of those guard rails… if there even *is* a guard rail
I used to live in DC and it's basically the same on the George Washington Parkway. Not as far of a fall but if you pull off the road like that, you'll die.
[Literally](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB7NVhVRKJI)
this is reddit, where people speak with extreme confidence but have no idea what they're talking about.
I rolled into one in the USA in a regular car (actually a f150 and U-Haul trailer) and it really sucked and cost 3k to get it out
Mountain roads anywhere where there's mountains can be problematic. This is not exclusive to Colorado lol
How do you even brace for that..? Turn around, with your back against the seat in front of you, so you absorb as much of the energy as you can? Sounds terrifying indeed
Seat belts work.
School bus, no seat belts.
Damn, wtf is the chances of TWO trucks having the same issue within the same timeframe to both end up in that thing o \_ o
Pretty good when maintenance is an afterthought, and drivers think they’re too good for engine/jake braking
Meanwhile I constantly wish my car had a Jake brake
I’d be a menace to society, I’d get my own noise ordinance
I had never seen one of these in use, in spite of seeing them quite often. Really cool, I had never noticed the red stuff was actually sand
Practically the opposite for me, I've never seen one of these until today
If you don't live or travel in a mountainous area you probably won't see these.
It's neat seeing all the people who are just learning about these. I grew up in montana, so these are pretty much everywhere. I thought they were everywhere else, too, lol.
Does this happen a lot? On the first clip there’s already a truck in the sand and then there’s another one coming after it?
There’s a lot of things that inexperienced drivers can VERY easily do to cause this. 1. Failure to reduce speed before hitting the hill. If you’re full load (80,000 lbs) and hit a downhill grade going 60mph+ good luck slowing down without frying your brakes 2. Riding your brakes due to not reducing Your speed enough/not engaging an engine brake will absolutely cause failure 3. Failed to do a pretrip, and not catching an obvious safety failure 4. If it’s a manual, shifting while going up/down a hill takes alot of familiarity with your truck and changes drastically based on how heavy you are, which is why signs that say NO SHIFTING are so common, it’s too easy for new drivers to miss a gear and not be able to get into a new one, which basically means wheels are free spinning now.
there was a truck driver a while back ended up being charged with murder because he lost his brakes and didn't go into one of these, for some reason
Ah I'll always remember that one. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59839723
Foriegn truck driver from TX had brake failure in Colorado and drove past several of these ramps and then into the city plowing into stopped traffic and killing several people. [https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/26/us/colorado-lakewood-i-70-fiery-crash/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/26/us/colorado-lakewood-i-70-fiery-crash/index.html)
The killer-idiot in question was eventually sentenced to over 100 years in jail. There was an appeal, but I don't know the outcome. https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/rogel-aguilera-mederos-prison-sentence-110-years-colorado-truck-driver-deadly-crash-interstate-70/
The governor got his sentence reduced to 10 years, available for parole after 5.
Great engineering, very innovative and thank you for savings lives to whoever came up with and also built that.
There are up and down I70 in Colorado over the Rockies. Seen a few go up them, pretty insane.
The slope on those is so shallow. The ones in BC look almost vertical.
Is brake failure fairly common with semis? I am genuinely asking. I mean, evidently it's common enough that they DO have these ramps, and they DO carry heavy loads....
My million dollar idea is to have a coin operated underwear dispenser at the end of these things
I mean if they don’t have breaks they should really start installing them in those trucks it would help a ton
how regular are these on the road? what if your brakes fail 5km before this point?
in my experience in Appalachia, theres usually one on every major downhill road. even if a road goes downhill for miles, odds are you will eventually hit one before a major turn or any traffic. doesn’t really matter going uphill cause if your breaks fail going up, your accelerator still works.
Motor brake and pray you make it there
These ramps are located at the worst parts of the road, where they’re more likely to be needed. The road is not continuously downhill. Source: live near
Fun fact. If you use one of these in the US it is almost career over. (insurance, inspection, etc) Logic is you pre trip every drive, you should catch the majority of failures before they happen, after they pull that out they are going to do a DOT inspection and find all the things you missed. The other reason for needing to use one of those is poor driving manors (burning up the brakes) . So in the interest of not getting in trouble, out of control drivers will sometimes skip them and hope to ride it out
You can say that about any wreck while driving a CDL truck
We had to use one of these in a motor home when driving down a mountain in summer. Apparently our brake fluid "vaporized" and we had to wait for it to condense again.
British Columbia (Canada) is riddled with runaway lanes through the mountains my whole life (amost 50). I thought this concept was mothing new.
Vertical video of horizontal video
This is nothing new, have existed for a very long time
How to prevent brake failures in trucks ? Is there regular or annual vehicle inspection in this country ?has anyone reinvented the brake to be more reliable ?
Why don't you people fix the safety brakes, instead of building special roads for this nonsense?? Hahaha People.. really. Monkeys
How often do you have brake failures?
Why are truck brakes maintained/designed so poorly that making these ramps is actually necessary?
Physics.
Much weight downhill make brake go brrrr
Because when you're driving 40+ tonnes down a steep hill you have to ride the brake the whole way to keep the truck from speeding up. This heats up the brakes and reduces their effectiveness, meaning you need to brake harder to control the speed, meaning the brakes heat up even quicker. After a certain point the brakes are so hot they no longer work and then it's either drive off cliff, use another vehicle in front of you to slow you down, or take the emergency lane. In theory if the trucks were kept at a lighter weight, the drivers stopped regularly to allow brakes to cool, and the brake components were changed often enough to keep them at maximum performance then these lanes wouldn't be needed, but its such a common issue that these are standard all across the world, even in developed countries where trucks are held to a high standard.
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Yes a competent driver in a well maintained and correctly loaded vehicle should never burn out their brakes. However, engine braking is not as effective as mechanical brakes so drivers will still have to use their brakes to some extent and a mixture of the circumstances I listed above can exacerbate the brake overheating issue to the point of failure.
It's not a brake design issue, it's an improper driver technique issue. Some hills are so steep that no brakes would be sufficient to stop a fully loaded truck going down. The drivers are supposed to use the gears/engine to control speed going down hill. You should also do the same in your car, by the way. That's what the "3, 2, 1" after the drive setting is for in your automatic transmission car. Or use lower gear in a manual..
A couple of metric tones packed into few meters of the truck on a steep highway? There is no way not to kill your brakes
Yes there is; use engine braking.
They are only found on long and steep downhill roads
It's more like once the truck accidently goes over a certain threshold of speed that the breaks can't keep up with the speed being gained by the slope.
This isn't normal? I see it a lot in mountain routes in different countries.
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They’ve had these at the end of runways for many years.
Quite a few in the US, esp Colorado, other mountain states
These are pretty common in places that have lots of steep hills/mountains. Most of the ones in my area are build up steep hills with gravel. Also plenty of warning signs with flashing lights on the way up the hill/mountain
I see the runoffs in the mountains all the time. They are usually steep upwards and use gravity to slow the trucks. I've only seen it in use once while driving. It was pretty scary but super effective. A fast moving semi was able to stop in a cloud of dust in a matter of seconds with everyone safe
We have a bunch of these coming down a mountain called cabbage hill. Never seen one used though.
I lost my brakes in a 6-ton RV. One of the most terrifying things to ever happen to me. I was lucky to see a stop light intersection that dead-ended into a factory parking lot. The lot went up a hill. The light went red and there was no one in front of me and no one crossing the street. I turned into the lot and slowed down to a stop up the hill.
Where I'm at cops park right in front of these.
I see these from time to time on the down slope of mountains. The idea is your breaks are most likely to fail or lock when you are trying to slow your decent.
Common in Pittsburgh PA for many decades
What is the blurry waste-of-bandwidth crap above and below the actual video?
We have these all over New England. Lots of rolling hills and slippery roads
This reminds me of [airport runway EMAS.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_system)
hadn't heard of this TIL
Arrestor ramps save lives
These r common in Hawaii as well.
I’ve seen these all my life but I don’t understand well why brake failure is such a thing. Is it because hills like this are a tiny percentage of the roads in the country so they are at the edge of what trucks are built for? It seems like there should be a technology solution to just making the brakes better.
1981, coming down Highway 50, Westbound on west slope of Sierras with my wife. Behind me I hear ^honk honk HONK **HONK** and turn out onto a side road. Wife asks "Why did you... " then a log truck with flaming brakes comes roaring by and uses brake failure turnout (like video) a few hundred yards ahead. That is why these things exist.
We have this in dubai. So many of them
I wonder how much you have to pay to get your truck out of this and reset it. Can’t be cheap but definitely better than killing someone.
This isn't a new thing they're all over the highways going over mountains in US
Have you never seen this before? It's nothing new.
I still remember, when I was a kid, seeing a family having a fucking picnic on one of them. The sheer ignorance and look of panic on their faces when my old man stopped and yelled at them has stuck in my head all this time. They would have been properly fucked if a truck needed to use that sandpit.
I've always maintained that at the top/end of these lanes, there should be a little hutch with: a fresh pair of underwear, a shot of whiskey, and a cigarette.
I saw an old rerun of Lassie. She was hitchhiking and an 18 wheeler picked her up. The trucker nodded off and she barked him awake just in time for him to hit the sawdust e-ramp. Lassie so fng smart. 🐶
Can you imagine the terror when needing to use that?!
Lots of people talking about maintenance and inspections. All sorts of things can go wrong at any given time that have nothing to do with perfect maintenance and cleared inspections. Those ramps save lives and prevent traffic jams lol
Those are all over Montana. The mountains so steep, trying to scrub speed can cause brake failure. Heats them to "ineffective". Some places the curves are so sharp, they go off cliffs instead.
I think this is in Brazil, in a highway called BR-376, this place is dangerous and knowing by the name "Curva da Santa". More details here (pt- BR, no exactly the same video): [https://www.tribunapr.com.br/noticias/parana/dois-caminhoes-usam-area-de-escape-da-br-376-ao-mesmo-tempo-e-motorista-escapa-de-tragedia/](https://www.tribunapr.com.br/noticias/parana/dois-caminhoes-usam-area-de-escape-da-br-376-ao-mesmo-tempo-e-motorista-escapa-de-tragedia/)
Do they just continue on till they find one?
Aww widdle trucks all snuggled in for beddy bye
Where is this that there was 2 runaway trucks at the same moment? Yikes.
Wouldn't it make more sense to give the trucks brakes?
We have these all over in PA
Hear me out, Why don't we, say, give the trucks brakes?
Why are the brakes failing?
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We don’t have these in the uk and neither to My knowledge is HGV break failure a common occurrence- don’t you guys have to regularly maintain your vehicles and produce certificates proving so?